Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

We’re about to close this live page for the day, but you’ll continue to see work from BBC Verify across the BBC this evening.

Today we’ve continued piecing together details about the suspect in yesterday’s Minneapolis school shooting.

Also in the US, we’ve dug into police data to assess the impact of President Donald Trump’s crime crackdown in Washington DC.

In Europe, we’ve reported on record-breaking wildfires that have burned one million hectares of land and verified a series of overnight Russian strikes on Kyiv.

And in the Middle East, we’ve tracked the first direct Western grain shipment into Syria following the lifting of US sanctions earlier this week.

Footage of overnight Russian strikes on Kyiv analysed by BBC Verify shows multiple residential areas were hit in one of the largest bombardments since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Olga Robinson has more on what we’ve verified today.

Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify Live journalist

Image source, Syrian General Authority for Land and Sea Ports

I’ve been keeping an eye on the the Syrian port of Tartous because in the early hours of Wednesday morning we saw the first direct Western shipment of agricultural products into the country since US sanctions were lifted.

According to the Syrian General Authority for Land and Sea Ports, external, the vessel MJ Sofia docked at Tartous carrying more than 19,000 tonnes of Romanian barley supplied by the US-based company AD.

Using the ship tracking website MarineTraffic, external, we can see the vessel’s journey from the Romanian port of Constanța through the Bosphorus Strait and into the Mediterranean.

In June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end US sanctions against Syria, which the White House said was a move to support the country's "path to stability and peace,” and on Monday, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control officially lifted the sanctions, external.

Paul Brown and Thomas Copeland
BBC Verify

Image source, Telegram

We’ve verified a series of videos showing smoke pouring from an oil refinery in the Russian city of Samara.

By matching nearly buildings to satellite imagery we can pinpoint the precise co-ordinates of where these videos were taken.

Nasa's Fire Information for Resource Management System (Firms) - that detects hotspots on the Earth’s surface - recorded a significant heat signature at this location and brand new pictures from Sentinel satellite imagery also show smoke emanating from the same spot.

At BBC Verify we’ve been tracking attacks inside Russia as Ukraine has stepped up it’s targeting of oil facilities and infrastructure.

Daniel Wainwright
BBC Verify senior data journalist

As we reported earlier, crime recorded in Washington DC is down in the two weeks since President Donald Trump launched a crackdown in the US capital that included the deployment of National Guard troops.

We’ve looked at overall violent crime going back several years to see how it compares with previous summers.

So far this month 154 violent crimes have been recorded, which is almost half the number recorded in August 2024.

In general, monthly violent crime in Washington DC has been coming down. In July 2023, there were 672 violent crimes in Washington's Metropolitan Police Department data. That was almost double the 347 recorded in the same month in 2022. But in July 2024 violent crimes had decreased to 293.

June, July and August of 2025 are all down so far on the same months in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

However, as US crime analyst Jeff Asher warns, it could take some time before the most recent crimes appear in the data and we still have several days of August left.

Peter Mwai and Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify

Between 16 videos and nine photographs from Kyiv today, we’ve confirmed four locations across the Ukrainian capital with evidence of overnight Russian strikes.

As well as the strike in the city centre, which we wrote about earlier, we’ve also seen footage of an explosion to the south-west at the Nova Anglia residential complex. Other video shows two of the high-rise buildings there missing windows and the ground in between them covered in panes of glass.

Meanwhile, in Berezniaky on the east bank of the Dnipro river, tiles and fixtures were blown off the north facade of a nine-storey block, with two heavily damaged cars in front of it.

There’s also footage from the aftermath of a reported strike in Darnytsia, east of the city centre. Video from there - some of it filmed by the State Emergency Service - shows four storeys of an apartment building turned to rubble.

In their latest update, Ukrainian officials say 18 people were killed, including four children, in the overnight attacks.

Additional verification by Paul Brown and Joshua Cheetham

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

BBC Verify is dedicated to examining the facts and claims behind a story to try to determine whether or not it is true - whether that’s a political statement, a video shared on social media, or images from a war zone.

And we’re also keen to hear from you - is there something you think we should investigate? We're particularly interested in claims you have heard or seen that maybe don’t seem right.

Or perhaps you’ve come across something online and want to know if it was created using AI or is a deepfake.

You can send your suggestions to the team here.

Joshua Cheetham and Richard Irvine-Brown
BBC Verify

Among the images emerging from the latest Russian strikes against the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, we’ve been looking at a clip showing the flight and then the moment of impact of a missile near the centre of the city.

It is taken from the CCTV recording we reported on earlier in the area of Cherepanova Hora.

We’ve confirmed the building struck was just across the street from the British Council’s office and about 170m (560ft) from the EU Delegation building.

Images on social media also show damage to the façade of buildings along the street, including the Council's building, and inside the Delegation's offices.

Elizabeth Dawson and Erwan Rivault
BBC News and BBC Verify

A record one million hectares of land - equivalent to about half the land area of Wales - has been burned by wildfires across the European Union so far this year, making it the worst wildfire season since records began in 2006.

Wildfires in Spain and Portugal account for much of what has burned during this season - which is not over yet.

The data comes from Copernicus’ European Forest Fire Information System, external , external(, externalEFFIS, external), external and extends back to 2006.

The previous record for European wildfires was recorded in 2017 when just under 990,000 hectares burned with notable blazes again in Portugal and Spain.

This year, heatwaves and drought combined with high winds have created the perfect conditions for wildfires to spread rapidly across much of southern Europe.

A new analysis of the early summer fires in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus by researchers at the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group at Imperial College London has found climate change is responsible for a 22% increase in the extreme weather driving the fires, making “once-in-100-year conditions” 10 times more likely.

They are currently assessing whether climate change has also played a role in the fires on the Iberian peninsula.

• You can read more in the full article here

Lucy Gilder
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Reuters

US President Donald Trump says his crime crackdown in Washington DC, which began on 11 August, has had an immediate effect with the number of offences “down like we wouldn't believe”.

We looked into what the crime figures show two weeks on from the crackdown, which has seen thousands of troops patrol the streets and the federal government take over the running of Washington's Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).

The MPD data we analysed does show a significant fall in overall violent crime since the crackdown started.DC police recorded 75 violent crimes from 12-26 August, external - a drop of 23% on the previous two weeks.

There was a smaller fall in the crime of "assault with a dangerous weapon" and an increase in recorded "sex abuse".

But a US crime analyst we spoke to, Jeff Asher, said this trend may not reveal the whole picture.

"Reporting [of crime] always lags so some of that decline is likely artificial. You probably need six weeks or so for incident-based reporting to catch up and make a comparison of the most recent period,” he said.

You can read more about crime in the capital, including an account of our visit to DC's District Court, here.

Olga Robinson
BBC Verify assistant editor

Image source, Reuters

I’ve been deciphering more from the notebooks of the suspected Minneapolis shooter, showing for the first time evidence of extensive planning done by Robin Westman before the shooting and the suspect’s relationship with the Annunciation school.

One of the notes, largely written in Cyrillic letters, starts by saying that “things are moving swiftly into place” and that Westman is “feeling good about Annunciation” because it is a “good combo of easy attack for me and devastating tragedy”.

The suspect lists a series of options for the attack, including during break time at a school or a Christmas concert at a church.

If the attack is timed right the shooting can “catch a big assembly on the first day of school” but Westman admits it might be too risky because people may disperse quickly.

The suspect concludes that reconnaissance is needed to see how many people are at the school on a normal day which could be done by pretending to fix their car and then checking to “make sure this place is worth attacking.”

Later on, Westman talks about driving past Annunciation one day to check how many children are there but being unable to see clearly.

The notebook goes into detail about Monday 25 August being the first day of school and Westman wonders if any staff would remember them.

The suspect then writes about how she is planning to shoot without aiming because unlike “the police and good guys”, Westman can fire indiscriminately and just “have fun”.

These notes are dated to late July, indicating that Westman had been preparing for this attack for more than a month.

Joshua Cheetham
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, Telegram

Among the images emerging from the latest Russian strikes against Kyiv, we’ve been looking at one dramatic clip circulating on social media.

It appears to be from CCTV footage and shows a missile hitting an apartment complex.

We’ve confirmed the building struck was just across the street from the British Council’s office in the city centre.

It’s in an affluent area called Cherepanova Hora which is home to major attractions like the Kyiv Planetarium and Olympic Stadium.

The attacks across the city have killed at least 14 people and wounded dozens of others according to Ukrainian officials.

Joshua Cheetham
BBC Verify journalist

Image source, National Police of Ukraine

We’ve been looking at images from the latest wave of Russian strikes against the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

The attacks have killed at least 14 people including three children, according to Ukrainian emergency officials.

Local authorities have not confirmed where the strikes took place.

But we’ve located video of damage to housing complexes in Kyiv’s Holosiivskyi and Darnytskyi districts.

European Council President António Costa has confirmed that the office of the EU’s delegation to Ukraine was also hit.

We’re continuing to investigate these and other strikes across Ukraine and Russia and will provide updates throughout the day.

Olga Robinson and Sherie Ryder
BBC Verify

Earlier we outlined how BBC Verify found a YouTube account associated with Minneapolis shooting suspect Robin Westman and downloaded two videos before it was taken down.

The videos show someone’s hand leafing through the pages of several notebooks.

They are filled with notes written in English but using both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets, along with a number of sketches and drawings.

These notebooks, which are dated, reveal the attack was planned weeks in advance and indicate a consistent interest in a school and a church called “Annunciation”.

One page, titled “Annunciation from memory” in Cyrillic, includes a rough sketch of the layout of a church, which the person in the video points to before stabbing the sketch with a knife.

The shooting took place at the Annunciation Roman Catholic Church, where children had been attending Mass during their first week of school.

While we were not able to access a floorplan of the church immediately a search for images available online indicated multiple similar features to those in the sketch.

In some of the notes analysed by BBC Verify, the writer weighs options of when and where it might be best to carry out an attack on “a large group of kids”.

At one point, the writer expresses a desire to “catch a big assembly on the first day of school” and the intention to avoid parents as they may be armed.

Image source, YouTube

Olga Robinson
BBC Verify assistant editor

As soon as the name Robin Westman emerged online as the suspect in the Minneapolis school shooting we started looking for any social media by that person and quickly found a YouTube channel which appeared to be associated with her.

It featured two videos which we quickly downloaded before the account was taken down.

Alongside footage of guns and bullets with different messages written on them the videos also featured notebooks containing English words written using the Cyrillic alphabet.

As a Russian speaker I was able to decipher what was in the notebooks.

One of the videos also contained a letter to Westman’s family that gave us the names of the suspect’s relatives.

This is extremely useful as we can use this information to find other family members using public databases and social media.

Court records we checked suggested the suspect had previously changed their name, from Robert to Robin, and we were able to match key details from those records with information contained in the suspect’s notebooks.

We’ll update you with more about what we learned from those notebooks as we continue our coverage of this story today.

Rob Corp
BBC Verify Live editor

Our team worked late into Wednesday night looking at the online presence of Minneapolis school shooting suspect Robin Westman. We’ll update you here on our work finding and verifying social media and YouTube accounts to get a better idea of Westman’s background.

With Russia unleashing another deadly bombardment of the Ukrainian capital our team is piecing together what happened overnight using the videos and images people in Kyiv are posting online.

Looking through social media and messaging apps helps us tell the story as seen inside the city. We’ll bring you updates on what we’ve verified here, and you can get the latest on the BBC News live page.

Elsewhere we’re continuing to investigate Monday’s Israeli strike at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza that killed at least 20 people.

As ever, we’re keen to hear what you think BBC Verify should investigate so do email us via this link.